The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-06-29

and that all shall exercise, by means of that uni
versal suffrage which we consider the basis of
good government, an equal power for the pro-
lection of their interests and the assertion of
their inallenable rights.
These men belong not to.that low order of HUI
manly which seeks nothing better than its own
good; they belong the same class John
Brown, men who unselfshly seek the elevation
of an oppressed people. They have sought re-
lief in by every other method than the
sword; at first by peaceful propaganda, by an at
tempt to create enlightened public senti-
ment, bat their efforts were met by stern edicts
of Punishment to Siberia or of still crueler con-
hnement the pitiless fortresses of Russia.
Their humble petitions for relief were haughtily
spurned; no avenue for redress remained and
when, at last, they were driven to employ the
terrible engines of modern destruction against
the visible head Of the great power which op-
pressed them, it was only after repeated warn
1ngs and frultlesS efforts to acquire by other
means that constitutional mode of righting their
wrongs which is possessed by every other civil
lied people in the world. Those men have shown
that they know how to suffer and to die for a
cause which they hold sacred Their infinite
constancy under the sorrows of exile and in the
hour of death, show them to be made of the same
stuff as those who, centuries ago. in times which
we call barbarous, submitted TO a mar:yrdom
not half SO cruel as that which they suffer to-
day. Those are the logical associates not
of Wilkes Booth or of Guiteau, but of Junius
Brutus and Charlotte Corday. unselfsh liberat-
ors of humanity. 1t is agains: such men that
are to let loose the hounds of persecution.
OF whom does Russia demand this act OF
servitude? From a republic which teaches its
children that resistance to tyrants is obedience
to God From people whose infant cry was the
first to declare to mankind the self evident
truths that all men were created equal; that they
were endowed by their Creator with certain in
alienable rights that among these were life, lib
erty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure
these rights governments were instituted among
men. deriving their just powers from the con-
of the governed. 1t is the last great des-
potism earth, the only one which has withstood
the glare of modern civilization, which demands
the aid of the foremost champion of liberty In
fNro thov olvy& haT affa hndd
its slaves.
The result of our acquiescence will be not
much the greater personal security OF the SOW
ereign as the moral sanction which our support
Will give to the perpetuatlon of the mercleSS
servitude in which he holds his hundred million
subjects. The people of America transformed
into the slave-hunters of Muscovy! What
bulwark for autocratic power! Shall we employ
the breed of bloodhounds which our Re-
public hired generation since to hunts few
wretched fugitives in the swamps Of Florida9 Is
the lesson of the past so soon to be forgottenE
And when some fugitive from Siberian mines,
perhaps a like Olga Lioubatovitch,
stripped and outraged by her brutal convoy of
soldiery, shall break away and gain our shores,
suppant. las Bakunin did, not many years
ago., how blithely shall we, who are always pratt
ing of liberty, consgn her once again to the
tender merces OF Holy Russia" 1t is incon-
ceivaoe that treaty containing the third
article" could have passed even its preliminary
stages at the hands of administration elected
by any other party than the one which enacted
the fugitive slave law, and declared in its nation
al PLATFORM 'non-lnIerAerence Win slavery III
the Territories"
No State department but one whose chief
sympathized with the system of human bondage
for which America has SO bitterly atoned, would
ever have permitted that clause to be placed
in a treaty with the great slave power of to-day.
Russia Austria and Prussia, the despolers of
Polish liberty! Let them renew again their
''holy alliance" against human rights. America
will never make the fourth. The Senate of the
United States iE still In the hands of those who
have inherited memories of Sumner and Lin
coin. Men still there who remember the
meaning of the old struggle. and who will not
hear its faintest echoes repeated for the benefit
of foreign power. VIM. ID. FOULkE.
RICHMOND, Ind, June 81.